The powerful House committee that decides and controls the nation’s tax policy has essentially voted to give illegal immigrants health benefits under President Obama’s proposed multi trillion-dollar government plan.

On the heels of a national poll revealing that most Americans want illegal aliens excluded from national health coverage, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means defeated a measure designed to reduce taxpayers’ liability by ensuring that undocumented immigrants don’t qualify for the benefits.

In a straight party line vote of 23-18, the committee rejected a Nevada congressman’s amendment requiring the federal government to confirm health care eligibility with the same databases currently used to screen welfare recipients. The government assures that illegal aliens don’t receive taxpayer-financed welfare benefits by utilizing the Income and Eligibility Verification System and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

Neither will be utilized to screen illegal immigrants when America’s Affordable Health Care Choices Act kicks in, however. Caving into the influential open borders movement, House Democrats refused to take action to limit the health system overhaul’s already outrageous and still-growing tab.

Nevada Republican Dean Heller offered the amendment as a cost-cutting effort by requiring the use of existing citizenship verification tools for the new health plans. The government-run healthcare system will kill jobs, hurt families and result in massive federal spending, according to the lawmaker. But if it passes, at least the government should assure that only citizens and legal residents get the taxpayer-funded healthcare, he says.

U.S. taxpayers already spend billions of dollars annually to provide free medical care for illegal immigrants with states that border Mexico taking the biggest hit. The expense has become so unbearable in California—long an illegal alien sanctuary—that several municipalities eliminated the perk this year to save tens of millions of dollars in the midst of the state’s dire financial crisis.

It hasn’t stopped Mexico’s government from operating programs in about a dozen American cities referring its nationals—living in the U.S. illegally—to publicly funded health centers where they can get free medical care without being turned over to immigration authorities.

While this may sound too outrageous to be true, it’s very real. The program is called Ventanillas de Salud (Health Windows) in Spanish and its mission is to help illegal immigrants find U.S. hospitals, clinics and other government programs where they can get free services without being deported for violating federal immigration laws. Imagine the campaign Mexico will launch when Obama’s national health care bill passes.